Jane Somerville

In 2013 Somerville was a guest on the BBC's Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young.

In 2012, Somerville was named as one of five legends in cardiology at the American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions. A "self-proclaimed trouble maker", she shared the event at Chicago with Eugene Braunwald, Valentín Fuster, Antonio Colombo and Magdi Yacoub, when she spoke about her 50 years with heart surgeons.

In 1998, Somerville was appointed emeritus professor of cardiology, Imperial College. She retired a year later.

In 1995, the British Cardiac Society held the first Paul Wood lecture, which Somerville gave. The title of her speech was "The Master's Legacy".

In the early 1990s, she founded the European Society of Cardiology Working Group on GUCH and became its chairperson in 1995. The GUCH patients were presenting with numerous problems outside their medical need that she founded and became president of the GUCH patient association in 1994, launched from the now Royal Brompton Hospital. GUCH patients could now talk to each other, seek help for all the social problems and meet to find they were not alone. The organisation was supported by the British Heart Foundation and its name was subsequently changed to the Somerville Foundation in her honour.

The Brompton Hospital incorporated the National Heart Hospital in 1989, however the adolescent ward was not included in the transition. Somerville thereafter worked on re-establishing one, which was later renamed the Jane Somerville GUCH Unit in 1996.

In 1980, she held the first World Congress of Paediatric Cardiology in London, a concept she envisaged. In 1988, she enlisted the help of American heart surgeon John W. Kirklin during the first Paediatric Cardiac Surgical Congress in Bergamo, resulting in a collaboration between heart physicians and heart surgeons.

In 1975, Somerville, "always feisty and prepared for battle", succeeded in raising enough funds to open the world's first hospital ward solely for the use of children and adolescents with congenital heart disease. It was named the Paul Wood Ward. The atmosphere differed from a purely children's ward. While it did have a children's play area, guided by a play leader, it also had a kitchen for adolescents and families. Family members could interact with each other, have a coffee and make a snack. This was appreciated by older adolescents, who in turn supported younger ones.

Somerville also worked alongside cardio-thoracic surgeon Donald Ross, who chose her to be the cardiologist for the first heart transplantation in the UK in 1968. They co-authored a number of innovative articles, including in 1966, the first report of the use of a homograft aortic valve to repair pulmonary atresia.

In 1967, during a time of significant innovations in heart surgery, Somerville was appointed as a consultant at the National Heart Hospital. She recognised the unmet need of the increasing number of adolescents and adults who were now surviving the heart conditions they were born with, thus founding the concept of GUCH. This new group of survivors had new medical problems and some soon required repeat operations, challenging the cardiologists of the time.

In 1958, she became a registrar at the National Heart Hospital, on Westmoreland Street, where cardiologist Paul Wood took her on to his team. Here, her interest in congenital heart disease led her to take on simultaneous work at the Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street, London, and she learnt about diseases in babies and surgery with Richard Bonham Carter and David Waterston.

In 1957, Platnauer married Walter Somerville, who she met in the late 1940s, when she was age 16 and he was staying next door. The couple had four children; one daughter and three sons . Walter died in 2005.

Jane Somerville (née Platnauer; 24 January 1933) is a British emeritus professor of cardiology, Imperial College, who is best known for defining the concept and subspecialty of grown ups with congenital heart disease (GUCH) and being chosen as the physician involved with Britain's first heart transplantation in 1968.

Jane Somerville was born in Edwardes Square, Kensington, London, on 24 January 1933 to Joseph Bertram Platnauer, who was a theatre critic for the Tatler magazine and Pearl Ashton who worked on Vogue. Her early childhood was spent under the guidance of a strict Irish governess at the family residence in Park Square which later became the site for The Prince's Trust.